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Comment by kitteh | Hacker News Reader

You also need precursors (like ET) which is difficult to get. Though China is a pretty good source if you can pull it off (and for other things like safrole, etc.).

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Difficulty is relative. Laundering Sigma Aldrich purchases at scale is challenging but not out of the realm for the level of resources + expertise needed for an LSD manufacturer.

It's not "backyard meth lab ordering 40ft container of pseudoephedrine" levels of ridiculous.

What's ET? It's pretty difficult for me to Google this acronym given that it mostly finds "et al" when I couple this with LSD queries. Is it ergotamine from the other subthreads here?

ergotamine

Something that comes from ergot.

Ergotamine Tartrate.

Interestingly, ET is used to treat cluster headaches and migraines.

LSD treats cluster headaches, for some people permanently:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/06/lsd-alleviates-suici...

As does Psilocybin in Magic Mushrooms. Back when we used to sell the stuff (UK, 2005 or so), we had a small 'lab' (a grand term) run by someone who suffered serious cluster headaches and had gotten involved with us through our selling of 'shrooms.

We used to sell to quite a few people who similarly suffered from the condition, and used mushrooms to treat it - but it was an impossible thing for us to market or advertise, due to the way the MHRA (Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency) dictates what beneficial claims can be stated about retailed items.

- ed typo, grammar

On the other hand if you have a migraine while tripping, it's not great. Taking triptanes is, well, risky as their interaction has not been thoroughly researched (i wonder why) and they both do stuff to HT receptors - so it's probably safer to endure the trip and take drugs afterwards. Good thing is that on LSD it is not "you"that suffers, just someones' body ;)

Various parties have pulled it off in recent years, as AL-LAD, 1P-LSD and a couple of other very close relatives (not prohibited at the time in various countries), have been produced and sold (mostly) legally in a variety of countries.

I wonder if Ergotamine could be an Amine from Ergot. Should probably be abbreviated EA in that case.

ET = ergotamine tartarate, the typical salt

It's been a while since I've done chemistry- does typical mean something in the context of chemistry?

If someone asked me what the typical salt was I'd say table salt

Typical cause that's the end result of most commonly used mass synthesis

Lsd is also exclusively sold as tartrate

Organic chemicals are often “salted” to cause them to precipitate out of the solution they’re synthesized in. It’s a salt in the chemical sense, but not in the culinary sense.

The way I learned it, if you mix an acid and a base, you get a salt and water. Table salt (NaCl) is the result of mixing hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH):

HCl + NaOH -> HOH (water) + NaCl

But if you mix a different acid and a different base, you'll get a different salt, for example if you mix sulphuric acid and calcium hydroxide, you get calcium sulfate:

H2SO4 + Ca(OH)2 -> 2(HOH) + CaSO4

Calcium sulfate is just a different salt.

Considering that this is coming from the same drug culture that uses the word "molly" refer to "some mixture of empatheogenic drugs and possibly some amphetamine", expecting specificity from your terminology is a bit unrealistic.

I'm not (just) being judgmental here: volunteering harm reduction at festivals, the number 1 problem we had was that users had no idea what they had put into their bodies.

Actual chemists, no doubt, don't use any of this terminology since chemical reactions don't produce the desired results if you're vague about what you put into them.

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